Spotlight incl Guestpost & Excerpt: Gene Gant – In Time I Dream

A warm welcome to author Gene Gant joining us today to talk about new release “In Time I Dream”.
Welcome Gene 🙂

I wasn’t into romance growing up. As a kid, I preferred science fiction and horror mostly, along with the occasional thriller. By the time I reached college, my interests had broadened to include tender, sweet tales of breathless and passionate love.

But not just the plain old vanilla kind where hot sexy guy meets hot sexy girl who overcome and go on to live happily ever after. There are times when I like my romance with a twist. Give me a story where a werewolf falls for a vampire, where a superhero falls for a super villain. What’s wrong with a meet-cute on Mars between two colonists there to terraform the planet? Or a rousing adventure on stormy seas where a pirate falls for the navy captain ordered to bring him to justice? Give me stories like Beauty and the Beast andThe Little Mermaid, where love, spectacle and fantasy come together in a delightful mix. As long as the emotion is there, the passion and the desire, a romance between an android and a human in the distant future is just as enjoyable to me as one between a banker and a teacher in modern day New York City.

That’s why I love man meets man romances so much. You can’t get less mainstream than that. These are stories that deserve to be told. And if there’s an element of mystery or science fiction tossed in occasionally, it’s so much the better. Variety does indeed add spice.

In Time I Dream About You contains elements of romance, science fiction and urban fantasy. Cato, a boy from the future, falls for Gavin, a boy living decades back in Cato’s past. Because he is serving time in prison and harassed by inmates determined to make his life miserable, Gavin has a hard time getting in touch with his romantic feelings. But those feelings do begin to slowly emerge in him.

In the excerpt below, Cato has already traveled back through time to meet Gavin and explain who he is. He convinced Gavin that time travel is real by transporting him to another era using the controls built into his watch. After taking off to complete another mission, Cato has just returned to Gavin’s prison cell in the wee hours of the night.

Enjoy,

Gene Gant

A sigh floated above me. I opened my eyes.

“Good. You’re not asleep,” Cato whispered.

His CO uniform looked crisp as ever, and even in the dead darkness, he was bright-eyed and alert, almost on edge. I was glad to have him back. “Hey. Here, grab a seat.” I sat up and moved over to make room on the cot for him. “I didn’t think I’d see you again for at least a day. You said it would be a while.”

“I’ve been gone for three days. I know for you it was only a few hours, but for me it was days.” He took off his cap and looked at me eagerly. “My boss wants me to take some downtime after finishing the mission I was just on, but I couldn’t wait to see you again.” He hesitated. His gaze turned inward, and I could tell he was weighing options in his head. A few moments later, he focused on me again. “When we were sitting on that roof in 1952… was it my imagination or were you… into me?”

I gave him a modest smile. “You’re hot, and it’s been a long time since a guy put his arm around me that way. It felt good, so yeah, I was into you.”

He sighed again and leaned over to kiss me on the lips, which surprised me so I flinched before kissing him back. “The night guard is asleep at his post,” Cato said after pulling away. “He’s going to miss his regular patrols tonight and won’t look in on you until 5:47 in the morning, just before his shift ends. Come spend the night with me.”

I would have protested (maybe), but there wasn’t time. Cato grabbed his cap, looped an arm over my shoulders, and circled the dial of his watch with his finger.

The cell vanished around us.

Gavin Goode, a promising high school athlete with good grades, forfeited his future when he joined a brutal street gang called the Cold Bloods. The gang’s leader, Apache, discovered Gavin is gay and framed him for murder. Now in prison, Gavin faces rape and abuse on a daily basis as gang members there attempt to break him. When his father is critically injured and Gavin reaches his lowest point, a mysterious ally appears. Cato is much more than the guard he seems. He has come from the future, and he possesses the technology to undo everything that’s gone wrong in Gavin’s life.

But meddling in the timeline has dire consequences, and Gavin faces an impossible decision: sacrifice himself and his father, or let thousands of innocents die instead.

Gene Gant on Gene Gant: “If you ask me, a good book is the best form of entertainment in the world. A book can touch the human imagination at levels movies, TV, and video games will never be able to reach. It was love of reading that lead me to become a writer. I’m Tennessean by birth, a resident of Memphis for most of my life. I tried living in a few northern cities after graduating from college, but I couldn’t take the brutal winters, and I missed good ol’ southern barbecue. Now I make my home on a country lane outside of Memphis. When I’m not reading, working out, watching movies or spending time with family and friends, you can find me tapping away at my computer.”